WarSclerotic

The Party of Victory.

– Caroline Glick (Bio and Archives)  Friday, November 9, 2012 

Next to the American people themselves, Israel is no doubt the biggest immediate loser in the U.S. presidential election.

President Obama’s foreign policy is predicated on the false notion that the U.S. and Israel themselves are the principal causes of the Islamic world’s antipathy toward them. Consequently, Obama has cultivated the anti-American, genocidally anti-Jewish Muslim Brotherhood and facilitated the Brotherhood’s takeover of Egypt and Tunisia and its gains in strength throughout the Middle East. In addition, Obama has appeased Iran’s Islamist regime and has enabled it to reach the cusp of nuclear capability.

Obama’s policy of relying on the United Nations has placed Israel’s diplomatic viability at risk as the Palestinians and the international Left that supports and feeds on their cause use the U.N. to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist. Finally, Obama’s animosity toward Israel has strengthened the hand of anti-Israel forces within the Democratic party. In the coming years, Israel will become an increasingly partisan issue in American politics.

While Obama’s reelection clearly places Israel in jeopardy, the plain truth is that the inevitable continuation of his foreign policies places the United States at risk as well. The jihadist assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi must be viewed as a sign of things to come, just as al-Qaeda’s 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole were precursors of the 9/11 attack on the U.S. mainland. Obama is empowering the United States’ worst enemies in the Sunni and Shiite Muslim worlds alike. Thereby emboldened, they place America at increased risk.

Israel can and must take the actions necessary to mitigate the dangers that Obama’s reelection poses to its national security and indeed its very survival. It must embrace its advantages in economic growth, the domestic support it can count on from its deeply patriotic populace, and its demographic advantages—it is the only Western country with a high and growing fertility rate. It must boldly assert its national rights. In its relationship with the U.S., it must move from being a dependent to being an ally. It must take the military steps necessary to prevent Iran from making good its promise to annihilate the Jewish state. It must deter the Muslim Brotherhood-led Egyptian military from making war against it.

As for the U.S., Israel’s allies in the Republican party and the conservative movement must now take a serious look at their own foreign policy positions and reassess them in the light of the Republican defeat in Tuesday’s elections and in the face of the growing dangers to the country that are the inevitable consequence of Obama’s reelection. This is not merely a partisan interest. It is a matter of the United States’ own national security.

For a host of reasons, Republicans have failed to make the case for an alternative to Obama’s policy of appeasement. During the election campaign, Mitt Romney embraced Obama’s support for the establishment of a Palestinian state. He refused to say that the U.S. must take military action to thwart Iran’s nuclear aspirations, despite the clear failure of the current bipartisan policy of sanctions against Tehran. Justifying Obama’s abandonment of the United States’ longtime ally Hosni Mubarak, Romney said that he would have abandoned Mubarak as well, even though Mubarak was the anchor of the United States’ alliance system in the Arab world. Romney failed to criticize Obama’s open-door policy for friends of the Muslim Brotherhood within the U.S. government.

Romney’s “me too” foreign policy was not simply a consequence of his hope to make suburban mothers in Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Ohio feel comfortable voting for him. Rather, it was a function of his political camp’s greater failure to recognize and contend with the unpleasant and hard realities of the world as it is. The conservative camp in general has been too timid to face the strategic implications of the Islamic world’s embrace of the cause of jihad and its goal, Islamic world domination.

During the Bush years, the so-called neoconservative camp believed it had formulated the means of convincing an American electorate dominated by the leftist media to support the projection of American power in the Islamic world. Claiming, and believing, that the purpose of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was to liberate otherwise tolerant and liberal-minded Muslims from the yoke of authoritarian governments, neoconservatives promoted an argument that permitted Republicans to avoid making the hard case for victory.

Even more destructively, the neoconservative campaign to make the Islamic world ripe for democracy necessarily ignored the larger pathologies there that rendered the totalitarian dogma of the Muslim Brotherhood the most salient and popular ideology among Sunni Muslims. The neoconservatives’ focus on democratization blinded them to the fact that authoritarian and problematic allies like Mubarak were often the only possible allies available to the United States. Finally, the neoconservatives’ insistence that the urge toward democracy and freedom is universal led to their failure in places such as Iraq and Egypt to use U.S. resources wisely. If everyone is just like us, then there is no reason to cultivate the habits of liberty. There is no reason to empower women. There is no reason to financially and politically support nascent and weak democratic forces or to postpone elections until the scales are properly tipped in the direction of moderate forces congruent with U.S. interests. There is no reason to support Christian minorities. There is no reason to insist on the normalization of relations between countries such as post-Saddam Iraq and Israel.

Instead, elections were perceived as a panacea. Give the Arab world the vote and all will be well. In the event, the result was just the opposite. The Palestinians elected Hamas—their branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Egyptians and Tunisians elected the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Bush administration’s false claim that the masses of the Islamic world share the values of the American people led to other problems as well. First and foremost, it confused Bush and his advisers about the distinction between Israel and its neighbors and so brought about Bush’s full-throated support for Palestinian statehood. His endorsement came even as it was becoming undeniable that the Palestinians, with their addiction to terrorism, their support for jihad, and their anti-Americanism and genocidal anti-Semitism, are the embodiment of all the pathologies of the larger Arab world. If you believe that Israel is no better than the Palestinians, then it is a short step to concluding that weakening Israel on the Palestinians’ behalf is only fair.

Losing sight of what makes Israel America’s closest strategic ally, the Bush administration relegated it to the uncertain category of “special friend,” sending to the Arab world the message that the U.S. was a treacherous ally and fundamentally confused about its interests in the global arena. If the so-called “peace process” was America’s chief concern in the region, then it followed that the U.S. should empower its worst enemies at the expense of its closest ally.

And indeed, by supporting Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 and insisting on an Israeli ceasefire with Hezbollah in the 2006 war in Lebanon and northern Israel, the U.S. did in fact help its worst enemies. In Gaza, it supported the establishment of a jihadist state that has since contributed to the transformation of Sinai into a jihadist base of operations, and it emboldened the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan. And it facilitated Hezbollah’s—that is, Iran’s—takeover of Lebanon.

The Republican party’s failure to reconsider the ill-founded assumptions of Bush’s foreign policy toward the Islamic world led inevitably to Romney’s adoption of it in the election campaign. And as a consequence, his endorsement of Palestinian statehood and of Obama’s abandonment of Mubarak made it impossible for Romney to draw a meaningful distinction between Obama’s foreign policy and the foreign policy Romney himself would follow if elected.

There are two reasons that it is essential today for the Republican party and the conservative movement to reassess their foreign-policy positions and sharpen the distinctions between their positions and those of the Obama administration. First, while we cannot say exactly how Obama’s policy of appeasing jihadists will play out, its trajectory is clear, inevitable, and dangerous for America. When the dangers become obvious to the American public, the Republicans will have to have a clear, distinct vision and plan for American foreign policy. If they fail to present one, they will not only hurt themselves. They will hurt their nation.

Second, today and in the coming months and years, there will be a lot of soul-searching in the Republican party and the conservative movement over what went wrong in the 2012 elections. And with that soul-searching will come the inevitable temptation to adopt the Democrats’ policy of appeasement in a bid to woo various constituencies—suburban mothers, for example, and perhaps Muslim communities in Michigan, Tennessee, Minnesota, and other states. But Republicans must understand that, while this is tempting, it is a recipe for repeated electoral defeats. Democrats will always and forever be able to out-appease Republicans. And so constituencies that want the American government to appease our enemies will always and forever vote for them. If the Republicans wish to return to power in the foreseeable future, they must boldly draw a distinction between themselves as the party of victory and the Democrats as the party of defeat.

Originally published on National Review Online

AP sources: US weighs broader nuke deal with Iran – Salon.com.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is considering a new approach in negotiations to curb Iran’s nuclear program that would ease economic sanctions faster than previously offered if Tehran makes greater concessions than it has ever discussed. The proposal is one of several options being discussed before another round of negotiations between world powers and the Islamic republic, officials said Friday.

The U.S. aim is to try to prevent the next set of talks with Iran from failing like all previous efforts.

The strategizing is taking place amid an upsurge in diplomatic activity. The U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency announced Friday talks of its own in Tehran in December. Negotiations bogged down last summer over permission to investigate sites for possible secret work on nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, top negotiators from the United States, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia have agreed to meet Nov. 21 in Brussels, a Western official said, in a prelude to a possible resumption of talks between those countries and Iran early next year. By that time, the U.S. also could be wielding the threat of new and unprecedented sanctions against the Iranian economy that lawmakers in Congress are working on, according to congressional aides and people involved in drafting the measures.

The basic contours of any negotiated solution are clear: U.S., European and other international sanctions would be eased if Iran halts its enrichment of uranium that is getting closer to weapons-grade, sends abroad its existing stockpile of such uranium and suspends operations at its underground Fordo facility.

But Iran’s leadership has refused to bite on that approach, even as the value of its currency has dropped precipitously against the dollar, sparking an economic depression and massive public discontent.

That has prompted U.S. brainstorming on ways to reshape the offer to make it more attractive for the Iranians, without granting any new concessions that would reward the regime for its intransigence, administration officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The administration sees Iran’s refusal to comply with its nuclear obligations as the sole cause for the logjam. But officials say the administration is considering an expanded offer that includes a deeper and faster drawdown in the oil and other sanctions that are sapping billions of dollars out of the Iranian economy.

Iranian jets attack the United States – America responds by sending a protest.

Two Iranian jets attacked an unmanned American drone in international airspace over the Persian Gulf last week.

The jets failed to bring the drone down even though they fired continuously until it managed to return safely to its base. Instead of responding militarily the U.S. responded by sending a protest to the Iranian government. Even though the attack occurred a few days before the November 6 presidential election in the United States the American public didn’t find out about it until November 8, two days after the election.

Which raises several questions Americans should ask themselves.

What exactly would the Iranians have to do for the U.S. to use its military against them…attack manned American aircraft, attack American ships, attack American facilities, kill or kidnap Americans, what? The drone was clearly marked as American, was clearly in international airspace and was clearly non-aggressive and attacking it was tantamount to attacking the U.S. itself…if that wasn’t enough to provoke a military response what would be?

What conclusions will the Iranians draw from the feeble American response…will the feeble American response encourage them to launch larger and deadlier attacks on America and can Americans expect the next attack to take place relatively soon?

Why did Iran feel comfortable enough to attack in the first place?

Why didn’t the American public find out about the attack until after the election…was news about the attack and America’s feeble response suppressed because it would have had a negative impact on Obama’s chances of being re-elected?

Why didn’t the United States respond militarily and who made the decision not to…did Obama, that well known micro-manager, prevent a military response for personal political reasons?

What conclusions will the Israelis draw from the feeble American response…will they conclude that they cannot depend on President Obama or the U.S. and that their survival and the survival of their country is entirely in their own hands…does this make a unilateral Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities more or less likely? After all, if the Americans won’t use their military to defend and protect themselves how can the Israelis believe that they will use it to defend and protect Israel?

What conclusions will America’s other allies in the Middle East draw and will American weakness lead to an arms race and war in the region?

What impact will America’s feeble response have on the morale of the U.S. military, which is already at rock bottom, and how will that exceedingly poor morale affect performance and future enlistment?

What does the feeble response reveal about Obama’s character and commitment to country?

What does the attack reveal about Iran’s ultimate intentions, especially now that it is on the verge of developing and possessing nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them?

What the hell ever happened to American strength…and pride…to America’s willingness and ability to defend and protect itself…to the doctrine of deterrence?

Americans should ask themselves these questions but they should pose them to their elected representatives in Washington. They should also demand answers, honest ones, and then take measures to make sure that such travesties never happen again.

Iran is America’s self-described mortal enemy. It just attacked the American military, which is tantamount to attacking America itself. That is an act of war, by anyone’s definition. America responded by sending a protest.

Feeble, absolutely feeble.

One thing you can depend on. I know it answers some of the questions but nevertheless…America’s feeble response does make more and bigger attacks a dead certainty and does bring war in the Middle East and beyond closer. Much, much closer.

Iran took note. Americans should too.

Iranian attack on US drone – payback for Khartoum bombing.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report November 9, 2012, 11:09 PM (GMT+02:00)

Iranian Su-25 fighter

Washington was taken by surprise by the attack on an unarmed American MQ-Predator drone over the Persian Gulf by two Iranian SU-25 jet fighters, which only came to light Thursday, Nov. 8, after a week. The newly-reelected President Barack Obama and his advisers had assumed they were heading in a quite different direction,  to very important direct talks with Tehran on its nuclear program and other Middle East affairs, including Syria.
But there was no mistake. Less than 24 hours after the event, Iranian Defense Minister Brig. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi confirmed that two warplanes had indeed fired shots at an American drone on Nov. 1. He claimed the unmanned aircraft he entered Iranian airspace, challenging the Pentagon statement that the Predator based in Kuwait was on a routine surveillance mission in international air space. The drone was not hit.

This was the first Iranian attempt to shoot down an American aircraft over the Persian Gulf and also the first by a Revolutionary Guards Air Force fighter jet. Until it happened, Iranian fighter aircraft were not known to have the ability to down an American drone or that its pilots had been trained for this kind of mission.
Had they succeeded, Tehran would have accounted for its second US drone in the space of a year, after downing and capturing intact an American Sentinel loaded with surveillance gear.
Whereas the Obama administration has set its face toward diplomatic dialogue with Tehran and was therefore taken aback by this sudden act of aggression, the Iranians have a different take on the coming negotiations.

First of all, they have no interest in the short, fruitful process compressed into three months sought by Barack Obama (as debkafile’s exclusive sources disclosed Thursday, Nov. 8), but have every intention of dragging it out over many months.

Neither is Tehran amenable to what it suspects are Israeli covert operations against Iranian targets carrying on in the course of its talks with Washington.
Iran and Sudan charged Israel with responsibility for the Oct. 24 bombing of the Yarmouk factory complex near Khartoum that manufactured Iranian missiles. It was implied that Iranian missile engineers lost their lives in the raid, which Israel has never acknowledged.
debkafile’s military sources note that if Israel did indeed attack the Khartoum factory on that date, it would have coincided with the large-scale Austere Challenge 2012 war game American and Israeli forces were conducting at the time. They were practicing defensive measures against a simulated Iranian ballistic missile attack, bringing into play the most advanced US radar facilities posted in the Middle East and Europe, including the US X-band radar stationed in the Israeli Negev.
Iran took it for granted that if Israel was responsible for the Khartoum operation, it must have been with the knowledge of US Middle East commanders, the war game chiefs and Washington.
During September, ahead of the war game and the attack, Tehran twice warned that American targets would pay the price for an Israeli strike against an Iranian interest.
On Sept. 3, the warning came from Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hizballah’s Hassan Nasrallah. He said: “The response will not be just inside the Israeli entity – American bases in the whole region could be Iranian targets.”
The same warning was repeated on Sept. 23, by the Revolutionary Guards Air Force commander Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh.
And on Nov. 1, Iranian fighters shot at – and missed – an unarmed American drone. This may be seen as payback for the Israeli assault on their missile plant in Sudan. It may also be Tehran’s warning to Washington to hold Israel back from any covert acts of sabotage if it desires negotiations with Iran..